Abstract
What is striking about current perceptions of the problems of the metropolis in the more-developed countries are the ways in which they differ in emphasis from the notions held on these matters only 25 years ago. In the main, the perceptions are less naïve, perhaps less optimistic, and certainly less one-dimensional. Consider some characteristics:
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1.
The issues are no longer seen largely as growth problems associated with economic and population expansion, but also as retrenchment problems associated with decreases in population, economic activities, and the tax base.
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2.
They involve not only problems of the metropolis—of functions and land uses (in inner and regional areas) of public services, transportation, housing, and community facilities—but problems of people within the metropolis—of crime, social welfare, and social conflict.
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3.
They are broader than former concerns about slums and blight, for they have been refocused to embrace areawide problems involving the quality of life and of the environment.
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4.
They involve pressures to ensure not only more explicit metropolitan and national roles in coping with the problems of the metropolis, but also to produce more decentralization, autonomy, and participation in the decision-making process.
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Notes
H. W. Richardson, “Basic Economic Activities in the Metropolis,” The Mature Metropolis, ed. C. L. Leven (Lexington, Mass. and Toronto: Lexington Books, D.C. Heath, 1978), p. 260. For more detail, see Chapter 13; also G. Sternlieb and J. W. Hughes, Post-Industrial America: Metropolitan Decline and Interregional Job Shifts (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1975), Section I.
P. Hall, “Statement,” in Successes Abroad: What Foreign Cities Can Teach American Cities, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on the City of the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, House of Representatives, 95th Congress, First Session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 4.
lbid., p. 11.
lbid., pp. 5–11.
Richardson, “Basic Economic Activities,” p. 260, Table 13–5; p. 268.
K. Mera, “The Changing Pattern of Population Distribution in Japan and Its Implications for Developing Countries,” in Growth Pole Strategy and Regional Development Planning in Asia, Proceedings of the Seminar on Industrialization Strategies and the Growth Pole Approach to Regional Planning and Development: The Asian Experience, Nagoya, Japan, November 1975 (Nagoya: United Nations Centre for Regional Development, 1976), pp. 247–277.
D. R. Vining and T. Kontuly, Population Dispersal from Major Metropolitan Regions: An International Comparison, RSRI Discussion Paper Series, no. 100 (Philadelphia: Regional Science Research Institute, 1977), p. 8.
lbid., pp. 14–24.
W. Alonso, “The Current Halt in the Metropolitan Phenomenon,” in Leven, Mature Metropolis, p.26.
Vining and Kontuly, Population Dispersal, p. 66. “In the first seven of these eleven countries, this reduction or reversal first became evident in the 1970’s; in the last four, its onset was recorded in the 1960’s. Six countries (Hungary, Finland, Spain, Poland, Taiwan and South Korea) have yet to show an attenuation in the movement of persons into their core regions. Some possibly unreliable British data likewise fail to reveal a slackening in the growth of the regions surrounding London.”
Ibid., p. 21.
Alonso, Current Halt, pp. 27–28.
Ibid.
M. Tachi, cited in D. R. Vining and T. Kontuly, Population Dispersal, p. 78 (Footnote 2).
For a summary volume interpreting the results of these studies, see R. Vernon, Metropolis, 1985 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), especially Chapter 9.
Hall, “Statement,” p. 7.
H. S. Perloff, “The Central City in the Post-Industrial Age,” in Leven, Mature Metropolis.
Richardson, “Basic Economic Activities,” p. 270.
J G. Williamson, “Regional Inequality and The Process of National Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 13 (1965); H. Oshima, “The International Comparison of Size Distribution of Family Incomes with Specific Reference to Asia,” Review of Economics and Statistics 44 (1962), 439–445. For some evidence questioning whether Williamson’s hypotheses applied to less-developed countries, see A. G. Gilbert and O. E. Goodman, “Regional Income Disparities and Economic Development: A Critique,” in Development Planning and Spatial Structure, ed. A. G. Gilbert (New York: Wiley, 1976). For some provocative views on “positional disadvantages,” see F. Hirsch, Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), Chapters 1 and 3.
L. Rodwin, Nations and Cities: A Comparison of Strategies for Urban Growth (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), Chapters 5 and 6; Tokyo Metropolitan Government Municipal Library, An Administrative Perspective of Tokyo (Tokyo, 1978) Chapters 4–6; CSRT Project Team, The Coming Society and the Role of Telecommunications (Tokyo: Research Institute of Telecommunications and Economics, 1975), pp. 25–46; H. Zimmerman, “Statement,” in Success Abroad,Hearings Before the Subcommittee on the City, pp. 17–23.
Rodwin, Nations and Cities, Chapter 7; J. S. Coleman, “Social Processes and Social Policy in the Stable Metropolis,” in Leven, Mature Metropolis, Chapter 3; R. Netzer, “Public Sector Investment Strategies in the Mature Metropolis,” in Leven, Mature Metropolis, Chapter 12; T. Muller, “The Declining and Growing Metropolis—A Fiscal Comparison,” in Sternlieb, Post-Industrial America, pp. 197–220.
Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, A Look to the North: Canadian Regional Experience; Substate Regionalism and the Federal System (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), p. 2.
Ibid.
A. K. Campbell, “Metropolitan Governance and the Mature Metropolis,” in Leven, Mature Metropolis, pp. 203–204.
A. Rose, “Two Decades of Metropolitan Government in Toronto: 1953–1973,” in Advisory Commission, A Look to the North, Chapter 3.
Ibid., pp. 41–47.
S. Lipset, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Change and Persistence in Social Structure (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. 32.
Rodwin, Nations and Cities, Chapter 7.
See, for example, M. Castells, The Urban Question (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), Chapter 4; T. N. Clark, “The Structure of Community Influence,” in People and Politics in Urban Society, ed. H. Hahn (Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications, 1972) Chapter 11.
R. Vernon, The Myth and Reality of Our Urban Problems (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).
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Rodwin, L. (1981). Problems of the Metropolis. In: Cities and City Planning. Environment, Development, and Public Policy: Cities and Development. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1089-1_6
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